


Shadows

by orphan_account



Category: Angel: the Series, Fray
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:36:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reunions, after a fashion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Faithhopetricks. Sequel (after a fashion) to ["Tell It Slant"](http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/archive/47/tellit.html) (Yuletide: Fray-fic).

SHADOWS

"Angel," she said, smiling up into his eyes. She traced the marks her lipstick had made along his collarbones. The lipstick was pink-red on her fingertips; her nails were painted a darker shade. "We should go shopping."

Angel pulled her in closer, trapping her hands against his bare chest. She hadn't let him take off her tank top, but he could still admire the lean curve of neck meeting shoulder, the subtle musculature. Earlier he had lost to her, arm-wrestling. No surprise there.

"Okay," she amended, "_I_ should go shopping. _You_ could brood. Or maybe"--she flushed a little--"I could pick out some shirts to match your wardrobe. Because, you know, that's so hard."

"Stay," he said, inarticulate as ever in the face of all those words. He went to his knees before her, wishing he could take off his pants as well--the shirt was halfway across the room, a black pool. When he looked at it out of the corner of his eyes he imagined his reflection furtively staring out of it. But of course that was impossible. In any case, he wasn't going to jeopardize this by pushing her. Not after so many years.

"Kiss me again," she said, in that giddy, teasing voice, as though he'd ever tell her no.

So Angel kissed her through her clothes, starting just above her navel and working his way down slantwise to where her thigh joined her torso, stooping further to kiss the skin of her knee below the hem of her shorts. His hands worked their way up to cup her ass. He closed his eyes.

"No, Angel--don't--don't leave me like that--"

He brought his left hand around to her front, put his thumb between her legs. No pressure. She leaned forward, into the touch.

"I could take you," Angel said, entreating. He remembered how to be gentle.

"You ripped out my heart," she said. "I woke up and you were gone. You woke up and I had to kill you."

"I was there for it too, you know."

The anger came and went in her eyes like lightning. "Make it _stop_, Angel," she said. Her voice should have been a whisper, but wasn't. "Make it like the first time all over again."

"No rain," he pointed out, practical. Besides, he didn't want her to catch pneumonia.

"Not _that_," she said, pushing him away.

_I can be gentle._ But she had to believe it, too.

She went to the bed first, shaking as she had that first time, even without the rain or the wound. The bed creaked under their combined weight. Obligingly, she raised her arms so he could undress her. She made a small sound when he fumbled at the bra's clasp.

"I'm sorry," Angel said, chagrined. "It's been a--"

She twisted around. "Shh," she said.

He wasn't as gentle after all once she was undressed. Against her brow he breathed, "You're mine now, you're mine again, I'm never letting you leave again," a stream of words like a prayer, except what god would profane itself with his desires?

She begged him to stop, first because he was in too deep, then because he wasn't in deep enough. Over and over she called out his name, never very loudly, as though the spell would break and he would disappear if she woke the world around them.

The thirteenth time she said his name, he closed his eyes anyway, and came. The number, ill-fated as it was, slipped from his mind. He thought instead of snow and fire. He was cold; she was not.

No matter how he drove himself into her, he never felt warm enough. That hadn't changed, either.

Her hair was spread out on the sheets, long and tangled. He got off her so she could breathe. She began to sit up.

"Don't go yet," Angel said: his turn to beg.

This time her smile was brash, wicked, knowing. "You wanna say that real slow? Make me believe it?"

"Faith," he said then, because she liked it when he used their names, and when she was being Faith he played by her rules. Except it wasn't play, not really.

He didn't know her real name, but she went by Saika, and she had the dreams, the memories, the way all Slayers except Melaka Fray had had. She had pale skin, but not fair, faintly olive-tinted, and hair as dark and long as a full night's dream. Her eyes were darker yet. Slender, long-limbed, and tall, she looked nothing like Buffy and only superficially like Faith. Nevertheless, he believed her utterly. The voices--they changed--were almost perfect. She spoke languages and dialects that didn't exist anymore, except in his memory.

She had held him against a wall the first time, slammed him into it when he fought back. She knew precisely how much force it took to mark him, or not. Sometimes he wished he still had the bruises from that first encounter, to remind him who she was. Not that he ever forgot.

_This is wrong,_ Angel had said to her when she eased up for a moment to press her mouth against the side of his neck. _They're dead._ He had held still, aroused in spite of himself, afraid that if he struggled she wouldn't answer.

She smiled Buffy's bright smile at him and said, _Angel, I never die. I'm more immortal than you are._

_We never did these things together._ Not fucking against a wall in an alley.

_We can do them now._

Angel had said, _Buffy would never--_

She had already undone his fly. Then she leaned in close again and grinned. _Naw, but Faith would._

Then she was on her knees.

_Bring her back,_ Angel said.

Her tongue circled him.

_Please,_ he added.

It wasn't until Faith had drunk her fill of him that he saw Buffy again, and then he knew he was lost.

"Faith," Angel said now, reaching out to stroke her hair.

She scooted backwards on the bed, agile. "Not so fast, sweetheart. A girl's gotta get something for her time."

What did she--"You want me to _pay_ you?"

She snickered. "Jesus, no. Well, I might take money from _you_." She admired his shoulders openly. "What I meant is, buy me a drink or something."

If there was one thing Angel knew from his centuries of existence, it was that bars would always exist. Not that Faith wanted him to take her to find what passed for one at this end of time, in this city of shadows. She wanted to fuck him. But she talked as though the bar were in the room with them, a heartbeat away. Perhaps, for her, it was.

In a way, Faith was easier to talk to than Buffy. Faith wanted to take him and use him, which he hadn't exactly objected to even the first time. Buffy always demanded that they relive something they had or hadn't done together.

Buffy wanted to be loved. He wasn't sure if he was capable of that anymore. Obsession, lust, but love? Love was for people who didn't rewrite their pasts in order to find it.

Angel said, "What kind of drink?" It was just talk. He'd never known her to drink or shoot up or put chips in herself, any of the thousand ways people obliterated their problems.

She flopped back on the bed, then swept her hair back to give him an unoccluded view of her breasts. "Something with a name that would make you blush--"

None of the names made him blush.

She pursed her lips. "Come on, give me something to work with."

"Is there anything we haven't tried by now?"

She put a finger up to her lips. "You're being naughty," she said, not all that convincingly, the way Faith only sounded stern if she was imitating someone.

Angel wondered sometimes what Faith had been like, right at the very end; if that Faith would have sought him out like this. He doubted it. Surely she had done better for herself, even though her life couldn't have been long.

"Maybe you should get some rest," he said. She did patrol at night, after all.

Her eyes flashed. "What, I'm boring you now?"

"My stamina is only so good," Angel said, but that line of argument was hopeless. She could be hellishly persuasive.

As he'd predicted, that only made her laugh. "All right--"

He didn't like the look in her eyes. It was mostly Faith but a little bit Saika, and Saika had her own brand of mischief. To forestall her, he leaned down and licked at one niipple, hooked one finger deep into her.

She shook her head; he felt the motion and misinterpreted it. Faith shaking out her hair, or shaking her head at some private joke. But no.

"Stop it." The voice was different: slightly higher, and differently inflected; more perplexed than angry, although it wouldn't surprise him if anger weren't far behind. "Do I know you?"

"Melaka," Angel said, shaken. Abruptly, he got up and picked up his pants from the side of the bed. He had known her: twinborn Slayer, from a time far after Buffy and Faith's. She wouldn't know of him. He had made sure of that when he stalked her. Then, because it seemed impolite not to introduce himself, he said, "I'm Angel."

"You're a lurk and we're naked." She hadn't moved yet, but her eyes were keenly focused on his. There was an anomaly. She wanted to understand it.

Angel felt sick. "Don't do this," he said, addressing Saika.

This once she humored him. Melaka's confusion receded; Saika's lips curved. "I thought a challenge might turn you on."

"She's a Slayer," Angel said. "She doesn't want anything to do with a lurk."

Saika looked scornful. "How would you know?" She licked her lips slowly. He couldn't stop watching her tongue. "Do you know the sweet, secret dreams she dreams about Harth?"

"I'm not going to be a proxy for her brother!"

"Then don't. Be Angelus. It'll be close enough for her." Lazily, she wound a strand of hair around her index finger.

So this was what she'd been leading up to. It seemed he knew how to love after all. Melaka Fray's problem, which was not her fault, was that he didn't love her. He was willing to do this to her.

"I'm always Angelus," he said, although it should have been old news to her. "It's just sometimes I hide it better than others."

"You're getting dressed," she said chidingly, although he hadn't put his pants on yet.

His voice was shaking: "I'm not doing this to her."

When she raised her eyes again they were intent, wary. "You don't want me."

He clenched his hands. There was no point in denying that he wanted what was being offered. There was no consolation in telling himself that they were play-acting, either. With Saika everything was real.

"It'd be rape," Angel said, hoping the raw ugliness of the word would dissuade her.

"You courted me," Melaka said. "You think I didn't realize?" She sat with her back against the wall and stretched, reaching beyond her toes. She had always been athletic. "You left stories of Slayers past in my city to terrify the lurks. You painted dead women's faces and dragons. You even painted me Urkonn. Do you do that for all your women?"

"I"ll do it again as often as you want me to," Angel said. It had been a long time since he sketched or painted. Superstitiously, he was afraid that if he drew Buffy or Faith, they would never come to him again.

Melaka's eyes were thoughtful. "Never done it with a lurk."

"That's because you know better."

"Angel--" Her voice was unsteady. "Do it fast, before I change my mind."

He needed no more invitation. For a while they sat side by side, kissing. She was clumsy, either with inexperience or dread, maybe both. His frustration grew. What did she want of him? Was he supposed to bow to Saika's will, or let Melaka back out? The rules had changed.

"Do it again," she said.

Angel understood her and spread her out on the bed, hooked his finger between her legs again. After a while he slipped in a second, then a third.

Her breathing was hard, harsh. With a terrible disappointment she looked up at him and said, "You're not Harth."

"Fucking him would be like fucking me," Angel said. They both knew Harth was long dead, how Melaka had won that terrible campaign. "He'd have cold skin and a cold mouth and you'd be the only thing that ever kept him warm after he was turned." His voice had gone low and silken. He couldn't help it. "He'd fill the world with horrors so it could pray to you for deliverance. Imagine a whole world to worship you; that's how much he loves you."

Melaka had stretched out her arms and legs as far as they could go and was making small, desperate sounds in the back of her throat.

He pulled out his fingers. She grabbed him; he broke out of the hold. Purple marks circled his wrist.

"There's only one problem," Angel said.

The question was dark in her eyes. She didn't resist when he climbed atop her and positioned himself at her slit.

"Harth loves you," he said, "but I'm not Harth, and I don't give a damn." He shoved himself into her, one sharp controlled motion.

Between thrusts he called her bitch, whore, slut. Mostly she understood him, even if it was English from the wrong century. Her eyes were wide, almost shocky, yet they retained the preternaturally alert quality. He knew then that he was indeed a proxy for a dead man and that part of her regarded him as practice for the real thing, even if Harth was gone. Who knew, maybe Harth would find a way to come back and be with his dead sister. He hadn't been a usual vampire, after all.

Angel smiled conspiratorially down at her. "Maybe he'll come back one day and catch us fucking," he said.

"He's a lurk, he wouldn't _care_," she said.

He covered her mouth with his and kissed her until she pounded his back for breath. As she gasped for air, he said, "Of course he cares, Mel. He's your brother. I don't even love you and I'm willing to paint cities bloody across all their dark alleys, all in your honor. I'll fill your cunt until you scream for more and you can't remember your name. And I don't _care_. What do you think _he'd_ do for you?"

Her breath caught, almost hiccoughed. "Jesu. He _left_, I couldn't save him, I'm the one got him killed--"

Maybe Saika had more reason behind this than he had given her credit for. "He died twice at your hands, Mel. Death is love. Do you know how much he had to love you to die the two times allotted him the way he did?"

Angel withdrew from her. She protested sharply, calling him by name. He lowered his face between her legs and tasted her there. At her sides her hands clenched on the sheets.

It wasn't until he tired of that and sucked on her left nipple that she cried out for Harth. If he had to guess he supposed he had chanced onto some old fantasy, some darkly cherished dream. She promised him death in the shape of blades and stakes and burning buildings, offered to drown him in herself, scour out the demon in him.

She wouldn't have wanted him so badly if he hadn't been a lurk. Angel knew that by the way she kept touching his silent heart, tracing his teeth with her tongue. Accommodating, he shifted for her, barely restraining himself from nipping her at the side of the neck. If Melaka was too far gone to make this rule for him, he'd do it for her.

In the end she didn't cry, although he could tell that she wanted to. It was in the way she held her head. "You'll never be my brother," she said, beyond shame.

Angel kissed her savagely. "If I were you'd have to kill me again."

She averted her face, and was gone.

Faith smiled at him, relaxed. "I'm never getting you to myself, am I, big guy?"

"That's not funny," he said.

"Come on, honey, give us a kiss."

He did so: he was well-trained.

"You've got B's lipstick all over you."

"Put on your own, then." Sometimes she did. Mostly she didn't. Mostly it was Buffy's paler, more innocent pinks and cherry reds. He thought she did it to remind him of the reason he stayed, even though he would have walked through sunlight and crosses for Faith as well as Buffy.

Sometimes, while she slept, he sat up remembering what it had been like to smoke. Saika and Faith wouldn't have minded, but Buffy would have so he refrained. In the half-light of early dawn he would sit at the single chair and wonder if there would come a night when he couldn't tell any of Saika's faces apart anymore.

Faith pulled him down onto her, although he was careful to prop himself up on one elbow so he didn't smother her. "You'll fuck us all," she said, arching beneath him so he couldn't help but press his groin against hers. "One by one in the parade of shadows you'll fuck us all." Now her voice was Saika's. "We'll be your princesses and your paladins, and we'll love the long nights away."

"I can't," he said brokenly. "I can't--"

"You already have," she said, not unkindly.

Then she was Buffy again. "You're hurting me, Angel," she said, with the particular catch in her voice that meant, _You've hurt me so much already, do it again_; that meant she wouldn't fight him.

He cried out, entering her. She would make him pay for that later. She wanted Angelus, and Angelus wouldn't have done that. But he was done jousting with shadows for tonight, and besides, there was always tomorrow.


End file.
